>studied chem in my undergrad and worked really hard.
>Got a 4.0 and did lots of internships, got scholarships, awards, etc.
>thought of it like a video game, applied for grad school and scholarships in my final year. >Got into a good 5 year PhD program and got a very valuable government scholarship.
>a year and a half in, and starting to realized I'm in a meme field.
>Very little math/programming involved in our research. Arguments are always qualitative, and involve drawing "idealized" diagrams of things.
>made friends with theoretical chemist
>shit is hardcore, research is mostly math, software development, but the end goal is to compute properties of molecules
>read some textbooks. Shit makes sense, but I can tell I'd need to devote all my time to it to really understand
>really tempted to switch into his field
I could just drop out and do a degree in physics/chemical physics, but then I'll be an undergrad at 28, which is fucking brutal. I could try to transfer my PhD into a theoretical group and just study the shit I don't know and try to catch up. PhD will probably end up taking 6-7 years instead of 4-5 though, and chances of failure are super high, and I could run out of funding. Or, I could just finish my PhD, self-study for a year after, maybe while working, and then try to do a theoretical postdoc. What do? I'm really enjoying being a rich, lazy grad student and being able to publish papers easily, but I feel like I'm fucking myself over
>Got a 4.0 and did lots of internships, got scholarships, awards, etc.
>thought of it like a video game, applied for grad school and scholarships in my final year. >Got into a good 5 year PhD program and got a very valuable government scholarship.
>a year and a half in, and starting to realized I'm in a meme field.
>Very little math/programming involved in our research. Arguments are always qualitative, and involve drawing "idealized" diagrams of things.
>made friends with theoretical chemist
>shit is hardcore, research is mostly math, software development, but the end goal is to compute properties of molecules
>read some textbooks. Shit makes sense, but I can tell I'd need to devote all my time to it to really understand
>really tempted to switch into his field
I could just drop out and do a degree in physics/chemical physics, but then I'll be an undergrad at 28, which is fucking brutal. I could try to transfer my PhD into a theoretical group and just study the shit I don't know and try to catch up. PhD will probably end up taking 6-7 years instead of 4-5 though, and chances of failure are super high, and I could run out of funding. Or, I could just finish my PhD, self-study for a year after, maybe while working, and then try to do a theoretical postdoc. What do? I'm really enjoying being a rich, lazy grad student and being able to publish papers easily, but I feel like I'm fucking myself over
